Why mounting a strong defence of the Convention is a tough call

THE aspiring founding fathers of a new phase in European integration are becoming anxious. As the Italian presidency prepares its push for agreement on a draft constitutional treaty in the intergovernmental conference, it seems increasingly unlikely that the IGC will endorse key elements of the draft adopted last June by the Convention on the future of Europe.

Hence the controlled anger manifested at the end of last week by a quartet of the Convention’s political heavyweights: Elmar Brok, Klaus Hänsch and Andrew Duff of the European Parliament and Lamberto Dini, chairman of the Convention’s group of national parliamentarians. Condemning the behaviour of member states in the IGC, they deplored “the fact that several key elements of the Convention package deal are being called into question”.

They said that, for all its imperfections, the Convention’s draft treaty is “the optimum advance that can be achieved at the present phase of integration”.

This is downbeat advocacy of the Convention’s draft and, for those of us who wished for a more decisive move in the direction of democratic, accountable European institutions, a sad reflection of the lack of ambition among even Europe’s leading integrationists. But there are other views. In a fine account of the Convention published this week*, Peter Norman, a former Financial Times bureau chief in Brussels, finds much to admire in its work and he remains deeply impressed by the leadership of its chairman, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.

But Norman’s enthusiastic welcome for many aspects of the draft treaty does not extend to the institutional provisions “that emerged from the final, fevered fortnight of negotiation in June”.

Yet it is the institutional provisions that the Convention quartet wish to declare off-limits to IGC interference. The “key elements” they are so anxious to defend include the Convention’s proposal for a Legislative Council whose work would be conducted in public, its simplification of the majority voting system adopted in the Nice Treaty, and the idea of a streamlined European Commission of 15 voting members.

While the Convention quartet cannot contest the IGC’s political and legal right to do whatever it likes to the Convention’s draft, the agreement this autumn between Paris and Berlin to support its adoption by the IGC raised hopes of a smooth passage. Indeed, the Franco-German lead appeared to confirm the view that, with its broadly-based composition of representatives of heads of government, national and European parliamentarians and the Commission, the Convention’s work had a certain democratic legitimacy that the IGC should not seek to challenge.

As the Convention developed its own dynamic and culture, many of its members came to believe that they were speaking for the people of Europe about the Europe we need with an authority quite different from that of national governments. A striking development, emphasized by Norman, was the effective alliance forged in the last weeks of the Convention between the national parliamentarians and members of the European Parliament. This was vital to achieve the broad consensus by which the final proposals were adopted, and was greatly facilitated by the ‘European political families’ of national parties that turn the wheels of the European political process.

The broadside against the IGC from the EP serves to highlight yet again the deep divisions in the Union between integrationists and intergovernmentalists.

The former triumphed in the Convention on such key matters as extending the powers and responsibilities of the Parliament and bringing more transparency to the Union’s conduct of its business by accommodating some of the needs of the latter. The same political trade-offs will be needed at the IGC,an intergovernmental grouping in which there is a strong reluctance among many of its members to ideas of further empowering EU institutions.

The dialect between the two camps can sometimes be both dynamic and creative – as can be seen in the slow but steady evolution of a European Security and Defence Policy. But too often, it results only in messy compromises that take the Union further away from its objectives of efficiency, transparency and democracy. The draft treaty is not short of such compromises, especially in its proposed institutional reforms.

The role of the standing chair or president of the European Council, so beloved of Giscard, was ill-defined by the Convention – as was the relationship between that office and the president of the Commission. The flaws were acknowledged by Giuliano Amato, one of Giscard’s two vice-presidents on the Convention, with the laconic observation: “I have defended the two-headed Europe, but no animal can live with two heads for too long.”

What Amato wanted, as did the Convention quartet, was for the Convention to set a target date for a single European president. This was a step considerably too far for the intergovernmentalists as was, in the end, a Commission president elected by the European Parliament. By contrast, the integrationists did secure an ambitious but ultimately doomed proposal for a two-tier Commission, with 15 voting members responsible for defining and proposing the common European good.

While there is every reason to doubt the political efficiency of a College of 30 commissioners or more, it is not clear why it should be any less adept at defining and proposing the common European good than one half the size. If the College is not to be elected, or to be led by an elected president, then its decisions will obviously be shorn of legitimacy if its commissioners are not drawn from all member states.

If the Convention had been bolder in prescribing more decisive steps towards democratic institutions, its advocates could have lined up their artillery in defence of citizens’ rights.

As it is, they are trying to protect an inconsistent design against those who have no desire nor capacity to be any more consistent.